Hallmark Birthday Greetings: Oprah Winfrey changed the world with the power of the spoken word

We send very fond and loving Happy Hallmark Birthday Greetings to Oprah Winfrey. She’s a legend, the go-to-gal for everything, the show stopper and the show maker for every woman, from smart-shopper savvy happy homemakers to sophisticated, professional bread winners, Oprah appeals to one and all the same. With her sun, Mercury and Venus all in humanitarian Aquarius and with her moon in the forthright, generous sign of Sagittarius, Oprah is easy to relate to; her approachable style was never more evident when she first started her program. She’d make it a point to greet her audience and she’d be among them to take their questions for her guests. She’s a real people person with genuine concern, empathy and understanding for the struggles and triumphs of her fellow human beings.

She shared things with us we had never heard from anyone on TV, or any other medium for that matter. Her accessibility was her great quality: she shared in our triumphs, commiserated with our great pains and stood up for values, for our greater good and for our decency as people.

Oprah is an icon, a brand and a survivor who has shown us how to live — with grace, compassionate understanding and through sharing. It’s a recipe for sure success.

Her fairly new cable TV channel OWN can sure use some success in the ratings department. Once she’s able to have more face time on the network it’ll be a fairer litmus test than what we’ve seen so far. Truth is, I know now why they say that hindsight is 20/20. I personally interviewed at OWN’s offices on Wilshire Blvd. a couple of years ago for a research analyst gig. I’m glad I didn’t get it, because they’d have to kill the messenger and I’d be it: my job would have been to analyze and report on the ratings to execs of OWN and to the O herself. The reason the network hasn’t gotten off to a big start is because Oprah hasn’t interviewed any newsmakers in quite some time. If she were to do a weekly show I bet it’d get good ratings. I think she has to wait until a clause expires in the contract she had with the syndicators of her long-running daytime talk show before she can fully jump into OWN full-time, or at least part-time or sometime. Her lieutenants at the channel keep playing a game of musical chairs to increase the ratings so that the $300 million investment from Discovery Communication is shown to be a wise investment. Discovery Health was repackaged as OWN and it came with a hefty price tag for programming. Let’s see if Oprah can use her gift of gab and her penchant for inspiration to turn this new network into something profitable. She’s bet her OWN name on it. I don’t know what kind of research they did when they chose a name for the network but to call something OWN sounds a little unctuous; especially at a time when some people are losing their own homes and some even their own shirts in this roller coaster ride of an economy. Why not just call it Oprah? Then again, what do I know? I didn’t get my OWN gig.